World Notes Australia

For Prime Minister Bob Hawke, it finally came down to the numbers. Last Wednesday newly released opinion polls showed not only that his Labor Party trailed the conservative opposition, 31% to 52%, but also that his own approval rating was a slim 26% -- down from a 1983 high of 75%. The next day, bowing to party pressure, Hawke put his job up for grabs, and lost it by a vote of 56-51 to the party's former treasurer, Paul Keating.

Thus ended Hawke's unbroken tenure of eight years and nine months at the % helm, the longest stint by a Labor Prime Minister. Although he was also the first Labor leader to be ousted while in office, Hawke, 62, bowed out graciously, pledging that he would "give Paul a hand."

The task ahead for Keating, 47, is hardly enviable. Labor fortunes continue to sag as the country's recession drags into its 18th month, with unemployment running at a 60-year high of 10.5%. Keating, who designed the economic- liberalization program that precipitated the country's slump, must now prove he is also the man to put the economy back on track. Scoffs conservative leader John Hewson: "Putting in Mr. Recession to get us out of the recession is the ultimate irony."